Ratings:

Pitchfork.com -10 out of 10

Rollingstone.com – 5 out of 5 stars

Hiphopdx.com- 4.5 stars out of 5

HipHopWired.com- 4.5 of these things:

Reviews:

This isn’t the same resourceful prodigy who made The College Dropout or even the wounded soul behind 808s and Heartbreak. Instead, Kanye’s Twisted Fantasy incarnation cherry-picks little things from his previous work and blows them up into something less than sane. The expansive, all-encompassing nature of the album is borne out in its staggering guest list which includes mentors Jay-Z, RZA, and No ID, along with new charges like Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Kid Cudi, and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. The inclusion of Minaj (who contributes the schizoid verse of her life on “Monster”), Ross (a guy known for making up his own reality as he goes), and Cudi (who’s probably even more wildly self-destructive than Kanye) especially adds to the hallucinatory tone. By the time Chris Rock shows up to provide comic relief during one of the album’s bleakest moments, it begins to feel as if Kanye is stage-managing his own award show with enough starpower, shock, and dynamism to flatten the Grammys, the VMAs, and the rest all at once.

When Kanye West sings about “jerk-offs that’ll never take work off,” you’d best believe he means himself. Being crazy is this guy’s job, and judging from the sound of his music, business is booming. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is his most maniacally inspired music yet, coasting on heroic levels of dementia, pimping on top of Mount Olympus. Yeezy goes for the grandeur of stadium rock, the all-devouring sonics of hip-hop, the erotic gloss of disco, and he goes for all of it, all the time. Nobody halfway sane could have made this album.

A proven master at thematic album-making, West’s fifth offering is an electric journey equipped with painkillers, a break-up letter, an overstuffed iPod and the latest issue of Penthouse in his Prada duffle.

Kanye’s album seems to be theatrical throughout the whole time it’s being played, and one major element that amalgamates this idea is the rich production that brings dramatic horns and powerful synthesizers. From the opening track “Dark Fantasy,” the combination of a British voiced commentary from Nick Minaj and the heavy horns and singers that accompany her, give an audio visual of why the album made so much sense to be made into a short film. As the album continues you see these characteristics in other songs like “All Of The Lights,” which in my opinion is a real stand out song on the album.